Interview by Wendy Sachs
“I don’t know when I’m going to slow down. When are you going to slow down?” Katie Couric asks me over the phone when we talk in early December. The iconic, history-making anchor has recently wrapped a cross-country, Michelle Obama-style book tour for her aggressively unfiltered and unflinching memoir “Going There,” which debuted in October.
Couric, 65, is all in when most people are looking for an exit. She is writing, producing and reinventing her media company. And as her 1.3 million followers on Instagram can attest, she seems to be everywhere these days, even serving as the first guest co-host of “Jeopardy!” last March. Couric has never been busier, even as many others quietly retreat during the pandemic.
Speaking to Couric, who is simply “Katie” to women of a certain generational span, the way Hillary, Oprah, or Beyoncé equally command one name, feels like just another girlfriend lamenting about the grind it all. But she is Katie Couric who, from 1991 to 2006, ruled the TV media kingdom during the height of morning network news shows madness. This was when guest bookings were a blood sport, ratings wars, and media gossip columns were full of anchor snark. So, while my hustle is real, it’s radically less sparkly than Couric’s, which includes a book party later that night hosted by Ralph Lauren. Still, “Katie” makes me feel like we’re in it together, sisters sweating it out in this crazy time, when we all have 10 jobs, and are reimagining our careers just to stay relevant. And that sense of sorority is Couric’s magic.
In November in Nashville, on the last stop of “Going There’s” nine-city tour, I sat in the historic Ryman Auditorium with hundreds of adoring, whooping fans, most of whom were women. These women would have been disappointed if Couric had not discussed Matt Lauer with them or relive her amazing Sarah Palin interview. These details can be found in the book. Couric opened the program with a TED-like talk that summarized her life, career, and personal grief at losing Jay Monahan, her husband, to colon cancer at the age of 42. And her sister Emily to pancreatic carcinoma just a few years later. Couric ended the talk with a positive note. Couric married John Molner in 2014 after 16 years of being single. Couric then turned the spotlight on artists, writers, activists and others doing good work within their communities. In Nashville, Allison Russell sang, and Kimberly Williams Paisley and Brad Paisley’s talked about their food pantry, The Store.
So, despite its name, the book tour was not really to talk about Couric’s book at all, but to tell other people’s stories.
“The book was my way of gathering people and being in conversation,” Couric says. “It’s such an oppressively venomous and depressing media environment right now, and I have thought for several years now that a lot of the solutions are going to be happening at the grassroots level so to be able to spotlight these unsung heroes and say, hey, this is an organization that’s doing really cool things, and perhaps you’d like to get involved.”
Couric sneaked in the spinach to what could have been simply a juicy recap from her memoir’s sizzle reel, like when Larry King lunged at her (“The tongue. The hands.”), or getting dumped over email by Hollywood producer Tom Werner, or how her nanny became obsessed with her, or how one of her diets turned her skin orange. But no, Couric shined the light on others during her book tour, because she feels that her life’s story, while worth writing about, “isn’t all that remarkable.”
It is, however.
“Going There,” now a New York Times bestseller, has lots of people talking because there’s a lot to unpack in these pages. Despite some negative stories at the beginning, everyone who read the book understood that the book was a success. ReallyYou will see that the headlines were click bait for catfights, schadenfreude, and perhaps some hate for Couric. But the memoir is a page turner and a surprisingly provocative look at the media’s institutional sexism and how Couric’s career was lodged in all of it, both before and after the #MeToo movement inspired a cultural reckoning.
It also reads like a personal reckoning, chronicling Couric’s journey from being known as America’s perky, plucky sweetheart with that famous, gummy smile to the vampy, mercurial bitch — all sharp elbows and “clickety stilettos.” Couric writes that her own insecurity fed by the fiercely competitive nature of the news business that at the time, had so few women at the top, made her insecure and territorial. She digs into her feelings of paranoia when Ashleigh Banfield, the anchor with the “bee-stung lips” was getting a lot of network attention. Couric writes that she had heard Banfield’s father was telling people that she was going to replace her. “In that environment mentorship felt like self-sabotage.”
“I feel like I was brave writing about the things I wrote. It didn’t always put me in a good light. I admitted mistakes and times where my judgment failed me…I think part of the reason we’re stuck and we can’t move forward on a lot of these thorny issues is nobody’s able to say, ‘I wish I hadn’t done that, or I wish I had done more,’” Couric tells me. “I’m mortified to write this, but it’s important that we all confront our past.”
Granted, this isn’t the usual journo-celebrity autobiography, especially coming from the bubbly woman America woke up to every morning for 15 years. Couric is truly surprised by the response to all her self-reflections and book candor.
“I thought if I’m going to write my life story, I should really do that and not just pick out the pleasant parts or the parts where I did the right thing. I wanted to say my regrets and my shortcomings and my failings,” Couric says. “It’s just so weird when people say to me, God, you were so honest. And I was like, well, isn’t that what a memoir is?”
The book also documents the many turns Couric’s career has taken over the past four decades. In 2006, after leaving the “Today” show, Couric went to CBS, becoming the first woman to solo anchor a nightly network evening broadcast. Her CBS gig also had her working as a correspondent for “60 Minutes,” a lifetime dream. Couric writes that no one at CBS was excited about her breaking the glass ceiling-breaking job despite all the publicity. Her $15 million salary also became a major story – “the biggest paycheck in network news at the time” and Couric’s hiring of a high-end designer to feminize her office and remove all signs of Dan Rather smacked of diva-ness. “The office was chic and smart and would have looked right at home at NBC. But at West 57th, it stuck out like a Givenchy gown at a hoedown,” Couric writes. “A really dumb move on my part.”
But it was the men at CBS who Couric felt didn’t want her to succeed. Longtime executive producer Jeff Fager, who has since been fired for sexual misconduct allegations, ran the place “like a fiefdom.” “What a dick,” Couric writes. On her initial tour of the office, a senior producer told her, “’The mantra here at ‘60 Minutes’ is ‘Someone else’s success diminishes you. Someone else’s failure elevates you.’”
Yikes.
After five icy years at CBS, Couric hosted “Katie,” a syndicated talk show and then pivoted to Yahoo as a “global news anchor.” This would become one of Couric’s most transformative career moves. It helped her Boomer broadcast identity adapt to the digital age. Couric was exposed to technology and journalism through this project, as well as how to reach online audiences. Couric founded KCM Media, her media company, after leaving Yahoo in 2017. John Molner, her husband, is the CEO. She’s been relishing her latest role as an entrepreneur learning new skillsets in a “pan-media business” with 35 people working for her.
“I think this is a natural evolution of my curiosity, about the way people can see the way we provide content and the way people consume it. When you’re on the air, even if you’re very involved producing and coming up with story ideas, you still do feel kind of like stay in your lane. So, I’m learning things like how to write an investor letter and how to hire people and what to look for and things that I never really did in a more traditional, broadcast space or media company,” Couric says.
Couric’s company works with “purpose-driven brands” to create content that aligns with Couric’s interests in health, the environment, and gender equality. Couric states that working with brands is a practical approach. It’s a way to pay her employees and even do some public service good — like reminding her audience to get a mammogram or take care of their mental health, but Couric says she’s careful about the brands she works with and the projects she picks. This model gives her plenty of independence to produce the content she wants whether it’s interviewing Cecile Richards, the former president of Planned Parenthood, or discussing the latest Supreme Court rulings concerning reproductive rights.
Maybe it’s age, or that she lo longer faces the threat of a younger, spunkier, hotter female journalist dethroning her, or maybe it’s that it’s now in the zeitgeist for women to support women — but Katie 2.0 has doubled down on lifting women up and promoting issues that impact women including reproductive rights, cancer screening, and equity.
Couric’s company is 95 percent female, and she has been investing in women-owned businesses and highlights female founders on her platforms. She is currently working on two female-centric documentary series and scripted shows that are female-centric. Couric was an executive producer on “Unbelievable,” an Emmy-nominated 2019 sexual assault drama which she helped option to Netflix.
At times, “Going There” reads like a real-life “Forrest Gump.” The index to the book is an epic “who’s who” of pretty much every influential person of the modern era. It’s a reminder that Couric really has been everywhere, even her colon — captured during a live colonoscopy on the “Today” show to encourage people to get their colons checked. We’ve watched Couric be celebrated for breaking barriers as the first woman to lead a nightly news network broadcast and then be ripped apart by that very media that apparently wasn’t ready for a woman to lead.
Through it all, Couric’s life has defined moxie and persistence, personal grief, and reinvention on such a large stage for such a long time and she shows no signs of slowing down any time soon.
“I’m all about learning new things and growing, no matter how old I am. I think you get to a certain age, and you just don’t want to work for the man anymore,” Couric says. “You know television is a very capricious industry where tastes change and you’re at the mercy of viewers or executives to decide that they’re just not that into you anymore. And that’s a very difficult feeling to have. I have total job security until I don’t want it anymore.”
“Going There” is now available to purchase.
Wendy Sachs is a documentary filmmaker and producer, Emmy Award-winning producer on network news television, writer, and speaker. She is also a former Capitol Hill press secretary, media relations executive, and the author of two critically acclaimed books about women and careers: “Fearless and Free — How Smart Women Pivot and Relaunch their Careers” and “How She Really Does It: Secrets of Successful Stay-at-Work Moms.”
Source: Women And Hollywood